Cycling UK Forum

geomannie

Cyclothesist wrote: ↑8 Aug 2024, 6:43pm
geomannie wrote: ↑8 Aug 2024, 6:14pm As others have said a common problem as I discovered when I was using brifters such as yours. I took to annual prophylactic cable changing to prevent hard-to-fix breakage within the brifter body.

I now no longer use them.
How do you change gear!!?

Gevenalle levers with friction shifters. Bomb proof!

geomannie

As others have said a common problem as I discovered when I was using brifters such as yours. I took to annual prophylactic cable changing to prevent hard-to-fix breakage within the brifter body.

I now no longer use them.

geomannie

Yes, I'd like to avoid gradients > 1 in 10 too! A feature to avoid those would be great.

FWIW I use Plotaroute.com and it allows you to see the gradients of created routes and then retrospectively edit them to detour around the steep bits should you wish. An automatic process would be great however.

geomannie

oaklec wrote: ↑5 Aug 2024, 9:54pm The mavic website is quoting open elite spoke bed diameter as 605 and the open pro at 602.

These things are never straightforward

You have to ask the question, which OpenPro? The design was changed about 5-6 years ago. I am referring to the older OpenPro model which was also available in 36H.

geomannie

As I recall yhe Mavic Open Elite ERD is 606mm vs the Open Pro 605mm. So yes shorter, but the wheel built and ran OK.

geomannie

I used a Mavic Open Elite rim with near identical ERD.

Thread here viewtopic.php?p=1626325&hilit=Erd#p1626325

geomannie

I find Plotaroute https://www.plotaroute.com/ an excellent mapping tool. You can have a basic version for free, but the premium is only £20/year which includes access to OS maps (alas not downloadable), a bit of a bargain IMHO.

A particular benefit of Plotaroute is that you can share routes with non members who do not need to sign up to view and download them.

geomannie

Thanks for your interesting comments. The general consensus is that for a professional to set up a bike from a box would cost £35 to £60. That seems eminently reasonable, but if the wheels needed the attention that mine did, £60 would be a minimum.

It's also great to know that Boardman's do a thorough pre-delivery check by a named mechanic. That should be a big selling feature IMHO. In effect, it's an additional £60 worth of effort included in the box for free!

geomannie

531colin wrote: ↑26 Jul 2024, 5:00pm My experience is long ago, but chimes with yours. Bearings always set up far too tight. Cables dry. Quill stems and seatposts dry. Cantilever brake setup so poor you wondered if they were doing it deliberately. BB threads dry.
But still they bought on line to get a fiver off list price and insulted me when I wouldn’t do a couple of hours work for four pence.

I forgot to mention the lack of grease on the seat posts. BB happily were sealed units.

geomannie

I have had an interesting day at a bike charity. Rather than work on refurbishing old bikes I was asked to set up brand new bikes (retailing discounted at ~£375) that were still in their shipping boxes. How hard can it be I thought?

Well, dear reader, read on.....

Of the three bikes I set up, the rear non drive side lock nuts on two were loose, on the third the hub was so tight the wheel would barely turn.

All the wheels needed de-stressing and truing. The dishing was off by a few mm in most wheels but it was considered too much effort to fix them.

The dishing being out meant that the wheels were a bit uncentred & I had them to play with the adjusting screws on the vee brakes to stop them rubbing. Brake blocks were all over the place.

Gears, thank goodness, were largely set up OK but all the same it was imperative to check the limit screws were set correctly.

Much of what I did was what might be regarded as more advanced bike wrenching and beyond the knowledge of the average rider, workshop level. From unboxing, setting up & clearing away the packaging each bike took me about 1.5-2 hours. A bit of extra expense if you were to pay a bike mechanic to do the work.

It made me wonder about people who buy online and assemble their own bikes. How safe are they? Perhaps the brand I was working on has poor QC? Maybe not?

Anyone else have good/experiences of bikes out of boxes?

geomannie

simonineaston wrote: ↑17 Jul 2024, 6:50pm
Anything user-editable cannot be definitive, however useful it may be.
That was my concern, I think, although I've firmed up my query since the first post. So, what I'm really interested in is where one can view the legal status of any given stretch of cycle infrastructure. It's rather obvious what the legal status is of the vast majority of carriageways across the land, as they're long since covered by the legal framework that we all become familiar with as we grow up - although judging by the behaviour of a great many of my fellow road users, knowledge of old favourites such as the Highway Code and projects like Cycling Proficiency may be less effective now than they used to be.
Where push comes to shove most frequently is on urban cycling infrastructure and especially where it's mixed use, or else changes in status along a complicated inner city path.
The example I used in my email to the Bristol Cycling Campaign (and to Mr cycle.travel, who turns out to be otherwise occupied...) focuses on a stretch of cycle path near me, which is wide enough to allow multiple users and enjoys frequent signage along its 1km length that clearly indicates that pedestrians and cyclists must share. Exactly where, I wondered, could one see that mixed use status online and it occurred to me that although that status may well show up on osm, the mapping employed by the authority who originally decided on that status is likely to be different. How, I wondered, could one establish that status say in advance of using the path, or else in the event that another user challenged my right to cycle along it...

As I said above, such a map may or may not exist. As an example, a few years ago I submitted an FOI to Glasgow City requesting access to the definitive locations of all the 20mph streets in the city, specifying that I expected either a map or the GIS data. What I got was perhaps 25 separate documents with written descriptions of which sections of which streets were 20mph. It took me many days to geo-locate all the streets/sections into a GIS project. At the end I had a far, far better understanding of the 20mph zones than the Council.

I think/hope that my local authority now has a better handle on digital mapping but I wouldn't count on it. If you feel you need to know the location and status of cycle facilities in your area, you could try an FOI request. Maybe the council will have the data in a GIS format, maybe not, but perhaps worth a try.

geomannie

simonineaston wrote: ↑15 Jul 2024, 9:57am
rareposter wrote: ↑15 Jul 2024, 9:52am There is no master map...
There must be. There'll be the one they use to plan their cycle-friendly resources. How public they make it is another matter. And I suppose it's entirely possible in this day & age, that different authorities use different systems...

There _might_ be a master map, but maybe not. For example, Glasgow has only published such a map in the last 3 years of so.
https://glasgowgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps ... c5902ce7f0

It's good, but not much different to Open Cycle Map.
https://www.opencyclemap.org/

Glasgow has also published a plan of their intended cycle network which is useful to understand where we may end up.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240216210 ... =60012&p=0

Long story short, it depends on your local authority.

geomannie

When you say play in the cassette, is it play between the cassette & freehub body or play in the freehub body?

geomannie

I started my wheel building as you are, by performing a lace-over /transplant. Like you I was interested in learning the technique for truing my own wheels.

I initially found the process time consuming and I had to go back and forward for hours, juggling radial/lateral truing and tension. I got there in the end and produced a rideable wheel.

There is one big difference. You are working on a 24 spoke wheel, I was on 36. In my somewhat limited experience, 24 spoke wheels are a lot harder than 36 spoke wheels to get true. I'm sure you will get there but be prepared for it to take time. If it all goes wrong, be prepared to slaken everything and start again.

geomannie

My one & only experience of a taking a Brompton by air (in a stout bag, down the fragile luggage line) was that I got it back with one of the little balance wheels bent, the ones used when folded

It was repairable but i never flew with it again. I guess it would have survived in a hard case but you can't cycle to/from an airport with hard case.

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